Words without substance

Welly Gnome highlights the Living Standards Framework new from the Treasury. Welly writes,

The framework incorporates the politically correct dialogue necessary for evaluating all potential policy options by the New Zealand Government in 2012.

“Living standards encompass much more than just income or GDP. It also includes a broad range of material and non-material factors which impact on the well-being of both the individual and society (such as trust, education, health and environmental quality).”

But notice that all these "broad range" of things are positively correlated with economic growth. Countries with higher growth and thus higher levels of income have better education, health and environmental quality etc. So growth is still the key factor and concentrating on growth still the right policy.

The words may have changed but the actions will not. These are just words without substance.